EDITORIAL: Pakistan can do no more than ensure that its defence capability is strong enough to deter any form of external, as well as internal, aggression and warn the world that India seems on the verge of initiating a conflict that could well plunge the subcontinent into nuclear war; and that too just to drive attention away from all its troubles at home. The threat, according to Pakistani intelligence, is so enhanced that the government has had to raise the issue at the international level. Yet for some reason the international community seems to downplay Pakistan's concerns so far. Perhaps it is the lure of India's huge commercial market that has blinded other countries from noticing its obviously proactive attitude against Pakistan; especially its actions in Occupied Kashmir that even India's main opposition Congress Party has attacked quite strongly. Yet everybody, including India's friends, stands to lose in case New Delhi really goes ahead with its plans and conducts a so-called surgical strike in or around the Kashmir region. Surely, everybody remembers what happened early last year, when Pakistan not only retaliated against Indian aggression but also shot down two fighter planes and captured one of their pilots in an episode that proved that we will not take any threat lying down and will most certainly pay back in kind.

Then, as now, the Indian government's actions were quite predictable. For whenever the local temperature rises beyond a certain level the Indian government invariably drags Pakistan into the debate and then lets the country's savage local media take over the fight from there. Back then the government was heading into a general election with little except giant disasters like the infamous demonitisation drive to be judged by the people on, so it naturally made Pakistan a part of the overarching national narrative at the time and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Modi, suddenly posing as the only party that could take the fight to Pakistan, was able to conveniently return to office with a very heavy majority. Now, the government's position and indeed India's own economic position is far far worse. First, the government's handling of the economy raised so much concern across the world that foreign investment to the tune of $45 billion had already exited the Indian market before the pandemic came to South Asia.

Then the way New Delhi panicked when the virus did come here, and ordered a very hasty and ill-advised shutdown that suddenly left millions of migrant workers stranded and forced them to literally walk many hundreds of miles to their homes in most cases, caused the coronavirus to spread at lightning speed, as was to be expected, and exacted a very heavy toll on the society as well as the economy, which is now officially in the worst recession since independence. That is why Pakistan is not surprised at the increased shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) nor at the fact that its intelligence agencies are picking up chatter about a possible Indian strike, something that would enable Modi to appear the hero even in these testing times. But there will only be so much to celebrate if the subcontinent is forced to experience the dreaded mushroom cloud, which is very likely if a face-saving misadventure gets out of control.

According to experts quoted in a New York Times report, in case of such a scenario the nuclear cloud that will build will not stay confined to South Asia. Instead, the earth's constant rotation will spread its effects over a region that produces 90 percent of the whole world's food. In simpler words, a nuclear exchange in South Asia would surely compromise the world's food supply for at least two to three years. And even when its effects recede there will be little left of India's market to do any country's reserves any favours. History, then, will not remember Modi as the man who saved India from a made-up threat of terrorism from across the border but rather as the man who put his personal image above the lives of millions of people.

It's a pity that the Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chose to adopt such a hostile position just when Pakistan, under Prime Minister Imran Khan, once again offered to settle all outstanding differences through talks so that the two countries could then move towards more constructive issues like trade and cross-border cooperation. And it's nothing short of a crying shame that the international community that has the power to check New Delhi's designs very easily is instead letting it play this dangerous game in the subcontinent. There is an urgent need to contain India right now, otherwise both its friends and foes, not to mention India itself, will possibly suffer in equal measure.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020